With the growing interest in energy conservation, increasingly more industrial work machines are supplied with electric drive assemblies for driving the work machine and operating its various tools or functions. Ongoing developments in electric drives have made it possible for electrically driven work machines to effectively match or surpass the performance of purely mechanically driven work machines while requiring significantly less fuel and overall energy. As electric drive assemblies become increasingly more commonplace with respect to industrial work machines, and the like, the demands for more efficient generators and techniques for controlling same have also increased.
A generator of an electric drive machine is typically used to convert mechanical power received from a primary power source, such as a combustion engine, into electrical power for performing one or more operations of the work machine. Additionally, a generator may be used to convert electrical power stored within a common bus or storage device into mechanical power. Among the various types of generators available for use with an electric drive assembly, switched reluctance (SR) generators have received great interest for being robust and cost-effective. While currently existing systems and methods for controlling SR generators provide adequate control, there is still room for improvement.
One technique for operating generators refers to predefined or preprogrammed control maps which suggest an ideal generator control profile based on the operational condition or state of the electric drive and associated machine. However, to implement such a map-lookup control scheme, the generator control profiles must take into consideration several possible events and conditions to which the generator and the electric drive must respond. Such control schemes may be adequate for steady state conditions, wherein engine or generator speeds are substantially constant and there are relatively small numbers of variables to preconceive and preprogram into a controller. With respect to transient states, however, wherein engine or generator speeds are fluctuating significantly, it is overly cumbersome and costly to take into consideration and preprogram all of the possible combinations of variables into a controller.
Accordingly, it is essential to provide more adaptive and efficient means for controlling generators of electric drive assemblies and machines. The disclosed systems and methods are directed at addressing one or more of the needs set forth above.